You get a level 1 spell and then a level 1 or 2 spell and then a level 2 or 3 spell. Level 1 or 2 spell gifts are almost always useless because you have a book and are casting spells of another school with more power and at a higher level. At level 3 you can at least get something that has utility like conjure flame or meph.

Supposedly some of the devs think that a level 1 spell gift is desirable so you can take Vehumet on a non-book start. I think it's bad to set aside two gifts entirely for players who want to make a really stupid god choice, so I propose the following:

1) Vehumet gifts Magic Dart for free immediately upon joining.2) Vehumet's regular gifts begin at spell level 3.3) Adjust the total number of gifts if desired.

searing ray is pretty baller though. But yea.. vehumets gifts are pretty much always useless because they lag behind the difficulty curve until way later in the run. Book starts will ignore all the low lvl gifts and non book starts will have a terrible time until they get fireball or something.

gameguard wrote:searing ray is pretty baller though. But yea.. vehumets gifts are pretty much always useless because they lag behind the difficulty curve until way later in the run. Book starts will ignore all the low lvl gifts and non book starts will have a terrible time until they get fireball or something.

The low level spells (like magic dart) may still be useful to branch out from your original school since by that stage there's more monsters with resistances. Magic dart is also nice for the long-range, especially to aggo a single monster or without getting to close. Not sure it justifies the current ways, but I thought I'd give my 2c.

How different is this from other gods' low-level powers? At what point does Vehumet gift useful spells compared to, say, Kiku's first book or Sif's book gifts? Sif's not totally analogous, but I've never felt like low-piety Veh was that much worse than low-piety Kiku.

Stonar wrote:I've never felt like low-piety Veh was that much worse than low-piety Kiku.

Low piety (less than ***) Veh worship is worse than every other god that uses piety, by a significant margin, the closest second is probably Ash (And really that's just because early in the game, before you've cursed a lot of slots, it's hard to want to use scrying as often as it would be useful to use, because it takes so long to rebuild it) Literally every other god has something worthwhile going on that contributes productively.

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Are there any stats available for how many worshipers of Vehumet memorize at least one level 1-2 spell offered?

If we remove low level gifts and lower the total number offered, would that just be an overall nerf? You won't even have the option in the uncommon circumstances where they're good (like getting offered Shock on an IE of Veh, or Poison Vapours on anything but VM). In my experiences with Vehumet, I start getting offered level 5-7 spells around when I can potentially use them, and I reach the three end-cap spells well before. Speeding up that process wouldn't help much.

If we remove low level gifts but don't change the total offered, players will see that much more of the lvl 3+ destructive spell pool each playthrough, and games might end up even more samey than they already are (Vehumet already lets players build nearly the same character every time).

As long as it's not a power level concern or otherwise hurting simply by being present, I tend to think it's upside to have "bad" things around that are sometimes good in the right context. It adds texture to the game.

Does it still solve the problem if the early-mid gifting stage were shifted slightly, but the overall structure is the same? If the hope is to more frequently get offered something worthwhile by about Lair time, would it be better if there were one or two fewer offers of Level 1-2 spells in favor of one or two more offers of Level 3-5 spells?

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I would really like both Vehumet and Sif Muna (and Kiku?) as spell gods if they offered any useful unique spells at all. Otherwise I typically don't care enough to use a spell enhancer god on a caster . . . that honestly doesn't seem to need one anyway.

svendre wrote:Just tossing this out without a lot of thought, but what if he gifted a staff of conjuration, or possibly a random one or one that roughly matches skills?

Or what if he just granted an intrinsic rank of conjurations enhancement at *, would that be too powerful? At low levels it's not game-breaking but it would certainly be helpful, at high levels you could hit a higher enhancement than anybody else but at that point you are probably flinging conjurations and firestorm around anyhow so its not like you arent OP already. Either way, it definitely fits thematically...

While I agree that Vehumet is not very strong compared to other gods, remember that this is partly because gods are very strong these days. Giving Vehumet an early buff would be a bit of power creep for gods in general.

Not that this is automatically a bad thing — I can't speak to whether the devs generally feel like gods are in a good place, power-wise. But there will always be a "weakest" god and trying to bring them all up to par will never end...

I am not a very good player. My mouth is a foul pit of LIES. KNOW THIS.

njvack wrote:While I agree that Vehumet is not very strong compared to other gods, remember that this is partly because gods are very strong these days. Giving Vehumet an early buff would be a bit of power creep for gods in general.

Not that this is automatically a bad thing — I can't speak to whether the devs generally feel like gods are in a good place, power-wise. But there will always be a "weakest" god and trying to bring them all up to par will never end...

njvack wrote:While I agree that Vehumet is not very strong compared to other gods, remember that this is partly because gods are very strong these days. Giving Vehumet an early buff would be a bit of power creep for gods in general.

Not that this is automatically a bad thing — I can't speak to whether the devs generally feel like gods are in a good place, power-wise. But there will always be a "weakest" god and trying to bring them all up to par will never end...

You're aware that I post a rework/nerf Fedhas thread once every couple months, right?

e: here is a list of gods that I think should be nerfed: Fedhas, Gozag, Hep, Kiku, Nemelex, Ru, Trog, Yred

njvack wrote:While I agree that Vehumet is not very strong compared to other gods, remember that this is partly because gods are very strong these days. Giving Vehumet an early buff would be a bit of power creep for gods in general.

Not that this is automatically a bad thing — I can't speak to whether the devs generally feel like gods are in a good place, power-wise. But there will always be a "weakest" god and trying to bring them all up to par will never end...

here is a list of gods that I think should be nerfed: Nemelex

I don't want to derail this thread but I have to ask, how would you go about nerfing Nemelex? Only thing I can think of is to add in more negative card effects.

njvack wrote:While I agree that Vehumet is not very strong compared to other gods, remember that this is partly because gods are very strong these days. Giving Vehumet an early buff would be a bit of power creep for gods in general.

Not that this is automatically a bad thing — I can't speak to whether the devs generally feel like gods are in a good place, power-wise. But there will always be a "weakest" god and trying to bring them all up to par will never end...

here is a list of gods that I think should be nerfed: Nemelex

I don't want to derail this thread but I have to ask, how would you go about nerfing Nemelex? Only thing I can think of is to add in more negative card effects.

Off the top of my head: Slow down gift rate, give less power per invo investment, remove some of the better summon effects (those tend to be the most broken)

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Balance-wise, the worst thing about current Nemelex is that you get a deck immediately. Because Crawl's difficulty is so frontloaded, a god that gives you something immediately is pretty much always going to be better than the ones that don't. Most gods don't give you anything immediately, or if they do it's something very niche that you likely can't use anyway (Trog's Burn Books, back when it existed, was obviously not useful if you hadn't found a book yet), or at least has a big penalty attached (Chei's Bend Time comes at the cost of being slow).However, Gozag, Hep, Nemelex, and Uskayaw all give you something good right away, with little or no drawbacks, so they're top tier regardless of their later abilities. A god that doesn't pay off until later cannot possibly compete.

Depends on the player. Crawl's difficulty is frontloaded for highly experienced players, who after the early game have typically found a way to climb above the power curve, and have mid- and late-game threat assessment mastered. For other players, gods that are stronger mid-game or late-game would be more attractive -- wherever they most need the power or survival boost.

duvessa wrote:Balance-wise, the worst thing about current Nemelex is that you get a deck immediately. Because Crawl's difficulty is so frontloaded, a god that gives you something immediately is pretty much always going to be better than the ones that don't. Most gods don't give you anything immediately, or if they do it's something very niche that you likely can't use anyway (Trog's Burn Books, back when it existed, was obviously not useful if you hadn't found a book yet), or at least has a big penalty attached (Chei's Bend Time comes at the cost of being slow).However, Gozag, Hep, Nemelex, and Uskayaw all give you something good right away, with little or no drawbacks, so they're top tier regardless of their later abilities. A god that doesn't pay off until later cannot possibly compete.

This is interesting as this seems to be the exact opposite reason for why the OP made the thread (that Vehumet doesn't do much until way later in the game). Hep and Usk do this by design, so its hard to adjust. As for Nemelex, what if the starting deck was just.. worse than a plain deck? Make it equal to the average wand you would have by this stage of the game but perhaps give it extra charges. Could also add the ability to 'consolidate' cards into this deck, for when you have tons of plain cards and do not want to juggle your inventory. This would obviously reduce the power of any 'consolidated' cards.

Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread anymore so I'll be making another thread on the topic of "Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread" if anyone wants to continue discussing this.